Dec 23 2008

Time to get RADICAL?

Category: economy,energy,environment,global warming,Obama — harmonicminer @ 10:49 am

The last time I looked, Thomas Friedman is neither a climate scientist, meterologist, physicist, or economist.  His academic training is in “Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Studies”. He’s a journalist. That’s it. So I hope Obama is not taking seriously this advice from Friedman to him, which presupposes Friedman’s ability to make scientific and economic judgments:

[Friedman] insisted that the challenge facing Obama required a revolutionary attitude to environmental policy, if the new administration wanted to avoid the devastating effects of global warming.

“We can do it if our next president, who I have great hopes for, is ready to be as radical as the moment we are in,” Friedman, whose previous bestseller was “The World is Flat”, told a lunch hosted by The Asia Society.

“Our next president is going to be called on to be more radical — I am talking crazy, wild-hair, paint-on-your-face, ring-in-your-nose radical — in what he does, than any president since FDR,” he said, referring to Franklin D Roosevelt, US president during the 1930s depression and the Second World War.

Continue reading “Time to get RADICAL?”

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Dec 17 2008

Who writes this stuff? Can they read?

Category: global warming — harmonicminer @ 12:06 am

NASA reports 2008 is ninth warmest year since 1880 – Yahoo! News

The year 2008 was the ninth warmest year since instrumental temperature measurements began in 1880, and all of the nine warmest years have occurred in the past 11 years, NASA reported on Tuesday.

This is simply false.  The hottest year on record since 1880 is 1934.  The second hottest year is 1998.  Don’t expect a correction on this report.  But be aware that you simply cannot believe what is reported on this in the major media.

The ten hottest years are, according to NASA (after some recent, painful revisions, embarassing as they were), in order of heat:

1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939

Draw your own conclusions about AP’s and Yahoo’s ability to read and research, and remind yourself of that whenever you read a story from either on this point…  and many others, of course.

In any case, NASA has established a recent habit of false reporting, and failing to validate its own records and reports, and then having to recant later.  Call it the Hansen effect.  When you’ve publicly committed to such an extreme position, you’ll say anything to put a good face on it.  Sadly, a great many more people have the same commitment, particularly politicians and media types.  Every time you see an “anthropogenic global warming (AGW) denier” accused of being paid by “big oil”, ask if the accuser knows how much money is taken by scientists from the government, IF they’ll sign on to AGW as the thing they are researching.

By a factor of ten or more, scientists get more more money to support global warming than to deny it, even if you assume that all “big business” money is given purely to fund the denial of AGW.  It IS clear that no scientist can get ANY money from the government unless their research proposal assumes AGW in the first place.

So how surprising is it that they keep “confirming” it, on the government nickel?

But they really should get their story straight.

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Dec 14 2008

If CO2 causes global warming, why does the temperature go up BEFORE the CO2 level follows?

Category: global warming — harmonicminer @ 10:26 am

A question for which I have read no reasonable answer that doesn’t sound like hocus/pocus (change the focus):

If CO2 causes global warming, why does the temperature go up BEFORE the CO2 level follows?  This is the message of the ice cores and other methods for linking historical temperature and CO2 levels.

From the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Minority Page

Aussie Scientist Says ‘No relationship between CO2 and temperature’

The bad news for global warming alarmists just keeps rolling in. Below is a very small sampling of very inconvenient developments for Gore, the United Nations, and the mainstream media. Peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and prominent scientists continue to speak out to refute climate fears. The majority of data presented below is from just the past week.  Also see: U.S. Senate Minority Report: “Over 400 Prominent Scientists (now over 500 and rapidly growing) Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007” & â€˜Consensus’ On Man-Made Global Warming Collapses in 2008   – July 18, 2008 & An August 2007 report detailed how proponents of man-made global warming fears enjoy a monumental funding advantage over skeptical scientists.

You really want to look over this entire report and run down some of the links to get a flavor for what you’re not getting in the major media. Don’t forget to check out Part Two of the report, too.

In the meantime, the Left will continue to blab on that “the case is closed” and “the evidence is all in”.  Something’s all in, all right….  and the only thing that seems closed to me are the minds of the eco-panic Left.

Dec 14 2008

A little history for the eco-panicked

Category: global warming — harmonicminer @ 1:24 am

This is priceless.

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Nov 01 2008

Global warming would be better than this

Category: environment,global warming — harmonicminer @ 9:38 am

ICECAP

In 2007-2008, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) and computer modelers who believe that CO2 is the cause of global warming still predict the Earth is in store for catastrophic warming in this century. IPCC computer models have predicted global warming of 1F per decade and 5-6C (10-11F) by 2100, which would cause global catastrophe with ramifications for human life, natural habitat, energy and water resources, and food production. All of this is predicated on the assumption that global warming is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 and that CO2 will continue to rise rapidly.

However, records of past climate changes suggest an altogether different scenario for the 21st century. Rather than drastic global warming at a rate of 0.5C (1F) per decade, historic records of past natural cycles suggest global cooling for the first several decades of the 21st century to about 2030, followed by global warming from about 2030 to about 2060, and renewed global cooling from 2060 to 2090 (Easterbrook, D.J., 2005, 2006a, b, 2007, 2008a, b); Easterbrook and Kovanen, 2000, 2001). Climatic fluctuations over the past several hundred years suggest ~30 year climatic cycles of global warming and cooling, on a general rising trend from the Little Ice Age.

It is not clear that global warming is a net bad thing. It is clear that global cooling IS. We’ll adjust to a little warmer planet, and may even thrive, but some will starve on a cooler one.

As usual, the eco-panic crowd is worried about the wrong thing.

Buy a Hummer. Save the planet with extra greenhouse gasses.

H/T:  Jerry Pournelle

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Oct 19 2008

Global warming reduction: at what cost?

Category: economy,environment,global warming,politics — harmonicminer @ 9:05 am

Bjorn Lomborg asks, why cut one 3,000th of a degree? That’s about how much difference Britain’s proposed policies will make, while costing ENORMOUS sums of money. Key graphs:

Continue reading “Global warming reduction: at what cost?”

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Sep 23 2008

Brrr.. a look back at the winter

Category: environment,global warming — harmonicminer @ 9:00 am

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its “lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Smile. Buy a nice warm coat. You may need it.

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Sep 16 2008

Don’t get hot under the collar

Category: environment,global warming — harmonicminer @ 1:47 pm

Take that, eco-panic global warming fear mongers.

And if this isn’t enough for you, start here.

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Sep 11 2008

Time to DRILL. Here. Now.

Category: energy,global warming,McCain,Obama — harmonicminer @ 10:34 pm

Venezuela’s Chavez says US ambassador must leave – Yahoo! News

President Hugo Chavez ordered the U.S. ambassador to leave Venezuela within 72 hours on Thursday, accusing the diplomat of conspiring against his government and saying he would also withdraw his own envoy from Washington immediately.

Chavez made the move in solidarity with Bolivia after his Andean ally expelled the U.S. diplomat there, accusing him of aiding violent protests. He said a new American ambassador will not be welcome in Caracas “until there’s a U.S. government that respects the people of Latin America,” suggesting that diplomatic relations will be scaled back until President Bush leaves the White House.

“They’re trying to do here what they were doing in Bolivia,” Chavez said, accusing Washington of trying to oust him.

“That’s enough … from you, Yankees,” Chavez said, using an expletive. Waving his fists in the air, he added: “I hold the government of the United States responsible for being behind all the conspiracies against our nations!”

Holding up a watch to check the time, Chavez declared: “From this moment, the Yankee ambassador in Caracas has 72 hours to leave Venezuela!” He told his foreign minister to recall Venezuela’s ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, “before they kick him out of there.”

The U.S. Embassy said it was aware of Chavez’s speech but had not received official notification. Embassy spokeswoman Robin Holzhauer said Ambassador Patrick Duddy is traveling in the United States this week.

The diplomatic spat brings relations between the two countries to a new low and raises questions about whether it could hurt trade. Venezuela is the fourth-largest oil supplier to the United States, and Chavez also threatened to cut off crude shipments “if there’s any aggression against Venezuela.”

How clear can it be? If you’re against drilling in the USA, everywhere we have oil, then you are consumed with some kind of sick self-hatred, and you hate the rest of us, too.  It’s time for the America hating eco-panic “gotta keep the wilderness no one ever sees pristine” Left to be replaced with someone who has our better interests in mind.

In the meantime, does anyone with a desire to survive and to live in a free nation really want Obama in charge when the Russians start putting bomber bases in Venezuela?

Maybe he’ll negotiate nicely with Putin….  hold him down to just a couple dozen bombers, and maybe only 100 or so nukes. 

In return we’ll promise not to admit any more former Warsaw block nations into NATO.

Fair trade, right?

We really, really need you, Senator McCain.

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Sep 10 2008

The Left suddenly notices ideological “scholarship”

Category: global warming,Group-think,science — sardonicwhiner @ 9:37 am

Some academics are expressing concern that a new Pentagon initiative to fund social science research that will be helpful for our military could be corrupted by the ideological presuppositions of the military.

The Pentagon is funding academic research to better understand the attraction of terrorism and violent groups in the Middle East — among other things. But some scholars are concerned the military is only interested in funding research that reinforces its world view. We discuss the complex relationship between the Pentagon and academia.

Say it isn’t so! You mean we can’t trust all those global warming studies that were funded by government agencies, the UN and other NGOs in order to find evidence of global warming? Who would ever have guessed that the agenda of the researcher could creep into the results of the research?

OK, it’s time to just start over. What we need is not just double blind research studies; we need double blind funding of research. If no one knows what research is being funded by which agency, and if no one knows who is funding their own research, and if the people doing the research have no idea who decided which research should be funded, then the agendas of the funders, the approvers and the researchers should be eliminated from the results.

What we need is a giant game of research funding “spin the bottle”. The funders of research will just hurl money into a huge common pot of research funds, the research approvers will initiate a giant lottery system that’s so complex that even they can’t understand it (harder to cheat that way) and the researchers won’t know whom they are trying to please, so they’ll just do their best work, we hope.

Of course, we won’t be willing to actually believe anyone’s research results until someone duplicates them… and given the lottery system of funding and approval, it may be awhile before anyone duplicates anything done by anyone else. Oh well…. science demands sacrifices of us all. I’m willing to wait for the gold.

Personally, I am shocked and appalled to learn that the funders and approvers of research studies have any influence on the outcomes. It shakes my faith in science. I wonder if we should reconsider leeches in medical care….

Or, maybe the Left just wants us to think that only research studies funded by the Pentagon are tainted by their origin, but all others are golden in their investigative purity.

Sure. I believe that.

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